Preprints
There are 2179 Preprints listed.
Plant traits poorly predict winner and loser shrub species in a warming tundra biome
Published: 2022-11-30
Subjects: Biodiversity, Plant Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Climate change is leading to a species redistributions. In the tundra biome, many shrub species are expanding into new areas, a process known as shrubification. However, not all tundra shrub species will benefit from warming. Winner and loser species (those projected to expand and contract their ranges, and/or those that have increased or decreased in cover over time), and the characteristics [...]
Describing posterior distributions of variance components: Problems and the use of null distributions to aid interpretation
Published: 2022-11-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
1. Assessing the biological relevance of variance components estimated using MCMC-based mixed-effects models is not straightforward. Variance estimates are constrained to be greater than zero and their posterior distributions are often asymmetric. Different measures of central tendency for these distributions can therefore vary widely, and credible intervals cannot overlap zero, making it [...]
Temperature change effects on marine fish range shifts: a meta-analysis of ecological and methodological predictors
Published: 2022-11-24
Subjects: Life Sciences
The current effects of global warming on marine ecosystems are predicted to increase, with species responding by changing their spatial distributions. Marine ectotherms such as fish experience elevated distribution shifts, as temperature plays a key role in physiological functions and delineating population ranges through thermal constraints. Distributional response predictions necessary for [...]
Amphibians' expansion to record elevations influences Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Batrachochytriaceae) infection dynamics
Published: 2022-11-23
Subjects: Genomics, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease
The climate-driven range shifts of host species could potentially impact emerging infectious disease (EID) events through several mechanisms, with repercussions for conservation and public health. Host range expansion could affect infection outcomes if hosts and pathogens respond differentially to new environments or create novel transmission opportunities if new contact is established between [...]
Implications of microbial community assembly for ecosystem restoration: patterns, process, and potential
Published: 2022-11-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences
While it is now widely accepted that microorganisms provide essential functions in restoration ecology, the nature of relationships between microbial community assembly and ecosystem recovery remain unclear. There has been a longstanding challenge to decipher whether microorganisms facilitate or simply follow ecosystem recovery, and evidence for each is mixed at best. We propose that [...]
Quantifying uncertainties of ecological forecasting under climate change
Published: 2022-11-22
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ecological forecasting is critical in understanding of ecological responses to climate change and is increasingly used in climate mitigation plans. The forecasts from correlative models can be challenged by novel environmental conditions and predictor collinearity that are common during model extrapolation. However, there is still a lack of comprehensive knowledge about how these factors [...]
Accounting for cloud cover and circannual variation puts the effect of lunar phase on deer-vehicle collisions into perspective
Published: 2022-11-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Although several studies have focused on the influence of moonlight over deer-vehicle collisions, findings have been inconsistent. This may be due to neglecting the effects of cloud cover, a major impediment to moon illumination, and circannual variation in both deer and human activity. We modeled how median cloud cover interacted with the illuminated fraction of the moon in affecting daily roe [...]
On the origin of speciation
Published: 2022-11-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution that natural selection leads to the evolution of organisms in "On the Origin of Species”, but did not show the mechanism by which new species differentiate and fix. Speciation requires a system in which genes are not mixed by interspecific hybridization, and reproductive isolation, especially postmating reproductive isolation, is considered to be [...]
A tale of two genomes: What drives mitonuclear discordance in asexual lineages of a freshwater snail?
Published: 2022-11-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
We use genomic information to tell us stories of evolutionary origins. But what does it mean when different genomes report wildly different accounts of lineage history? This “discordance” can be a consequence of a fascinating suite of natural history and evolutionary phenomena, from the different inheritance mechanisms of nuclear vs. cytoplasmic genomes to hybridization and introgression to [...]
Understanding the systematics and evolution of Vaccinium sect. Cyanococcus (Ericaceae): progress and prospects
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
The true blueberries (Vaccinium sect. Cyanococcus; Ericaceae) comprise a clade of about nine to 24 species distributed mainly in eastern temperate North America, with one species reaching farther west. Despite extensive study, the systematics and evolution of the group are still poorly understood. Limited morphological variation, multiple ploidy levels of uncertain origin, and natural [...]
Typification of plants illustrated by Feuillée: a reply to Zanotti et al.
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Biodiversity
ABSTRACT: Zanotti et al. (2022a) lectotypified Gnaphalium viravira Feuillée ex Molina with its illustration in Feuillée (1725). They concluded that this illustration qualified as original material seen by Molina (1782). However, Hershkovitz (2020a, b) had concluded that Molina had not seen any of the illustrations in Feuillée (1725), thus none qualify as original material for taxa he validly [...]
Few studies of wild animal performance account for parasite infections: a systematic review
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
1. Wild animals have parasites. This inconvenient truth has far-reaching implications for biologists measuring animal performance traits: infection with parasites can alter host behaviour and physiology in profound and sometimes counterintuitive ways. Yet, to what extent do studies on wild animals take individual infection status into account? 2. We performed a systematic review across eight [...]
Morphological plasticity in a caddisfly that co-occurs in lakes and streams
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Lake and stream fauna are frequently studied, yet surprisingly little is known about ecological and evolutionary dynamics of species that inhabit both lentic and lotic habitats. There are few examples of species co-occurring in the different habitat flow types, which raises questions on how this may impact their ability to adapt to changing climatic conditions. The aquatic insect Limnephilus [...]
A synthetic review: natural history of amniote reproductive modes in light of comparative evolutionary genomics
Published: 2022-11-18
Subjects: Life Sciences
There is a current lack of consensus on whether the ancestral parity mode was oviparity (egg-laying) or viviparity (live-birth) in amniotes and particularly in squamates (snakes, lizards, and amphisbaenids). How transitions between parity modes occur at the genomic level has primary importance for how science conceptualizes the origin of amniotes, and highly variable parity modes in Squamata. [...]
Misrepresenting biases in arrival: a comment on Svensson (2022)
Published: 2022-11-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The idea that adaptive change is subject to biases in variation by a "first come, first served" dynamic is not part of classic evolutionary reasoning. Yet, predictable effects of biases in the introduction of variation have been reported in models of population genetics, in laboratory evolution, and in retrospective analyses of natural adaptation. This effect of "arrival bias" has potentially [...]